So after what has a been a fairly hectic 8 days in Sydney, the highlight being the ANZAB dinner which was attended by 150 people,

(note the whistle, you don’t see that too often these days!), we’re now starting the journey back to WA.

On Saturday 16th June, we said goodbye to our good friends and hosts, Jackie and Robert (who are flying out to the UK tomorrow) and picked up the caravan from Pitt Town, in the rain, (which seems to have been incessant since last Saturday afternoon) and headed south to Camden, an hour and a half from Pitt Town.   In the afternoon we caught up with some friends who we hadn’t seen since we left Sydney in 1996, so we had a great deal to catch up with and we enjoyed their company ’til quite late and had to drive back to Camden in the dark and, of course, the rain.

Sunday 17th June

This morning the sun shone and we thought we were in for a change.   We went to Menangle to ring for Sunday service, a new tower for us and a cup of tea before heading back to Camden to hook up the caravan.   At the back of Menangle church in the  in the 50s was a Rotolactor, which apparently was a rotary milking platform (we would probably call it a carousel these days) but such was the novelty of this machine, that families would come from miles around and make a day out of it, bringing picnic lunches or buying teas, coffees, etc from the cafe that operated at the site!   Several of the ringers remember going there as children.

Back on the road we made for Goulburn our night stop, the rain started as we approached the town but had stopped by the time we got here.   With time to spare this afternoon, we’re catching with blogs, etc.   NB! I have finally managed to get a new page on the blog, ‘Our Route This Trip’, which will give you better idea of where we are.

Monday 18th June

It is, of course, raining this morning as we head off in the general direction of WA and Nerrandera which is our target stop for the night but not before going shopping in Golburn and filling up with diesel at the fuel stop next the Big Merino.  

  There is always something behind the story, of course and the Big Merino is no exception……………………

What with shopping and giant sheep we don’t get on the road proper until 1000 and since our route takes up hill and down dale in the Southern Tablelands of NSW (plus a strong wind at times) we decide, after lunch, that the small town of Coolamon will have the pleasure of our company tonight.   It is, of course, raining when we get there, a Shire managed park, with not much space for our rig but we find a spare bit of grass.   The booking is done by the people at the newsagents which is a short walk away.

Having got established, we spent the next hour or so chopping, vacuum packing and freezing fruit and vegetables.   Why? well tomorrow we will enter a ‘fruit fly exclusion zone’ and if we don’t do this all our food will be confiscated if we are stopped and searched.   How the fruit flies know that they excluded will aleays be a mystery to me, exacerbated by the fact that all the fruit and veg that we have just been operating on was probably grown in the area we’re just entering!

Tuesday 19^th  June

This morning it is raining as we leave Coolamon and head west, with Balranald as our proposed night stop.   However, as we put the ks behind us, we can see patched of blue sky in the distance and hope that they will still be there when we get to them!

This is the heart of the eastern wheat growing area and the majority of townships comprise a few grain silos, a railway siding and an hotel, like these at a place called Grong Grong (it’s true, zoom in on the hotel sign!).

As we head further west we’re basically running the flood plain of the Murrumbidgee river one of the major waterways of the Murray-Darling basin river system and the SUN IS SHINING!!!.

The picture (above left) is the river at Darlington Point and the is of one half of counter-weighted lift bridge. 

The water in these rivers is currently the cause for bitter dispute between the ‘irrigators’ and the others who use the river system for providing drinking water, environmental management and tourism services.In the last two winters the Murrumbidgee has overflowed it’s banks and filled the flood plain and today significant areas are still under water.   This is the culprit,

  

cotton, which requires vast quantities of water, which the irrigators have been extracting from the river with little constraint for a very long time.    This has also been happening in the rest of the system to the extent that the freshwater lakes in the lower reaches of the system have become salty (with the consequential impact on the environment and has led to the silting up of the mouth of the Murray where it reaches the sea.

The rest of the way to Balranald via Hay, it very much like parts of the Nullabor, only with water!

By three-thirty we had reached our destination, Balranald, Pat’s done some washing and I’ve had a cup of tea and taken some photographs.   This is the Murrumbidgee again at Balranald,